FORGIVE US

Forgive us, forgive us your death,

That myself the believers, may hold it in a great flood,

Till the blood shall spurt, and the dust shall sing like a bird,

As the grains blow, as your death grows through hearts,

Crying, you are dying, cry, child below cockcrow,

By the fire dwarfed, street we chant the flying sea,

In the body bereft.

When I was a windy boy and a bit, and the black spit of my city road,

Sighed the old black rod, dying of women I stood shy,

In the horny wood, the rude owl cry like a frozen tit,

I skipped in a blush as the big girl rolled, shadowed down by the first rain,

And on the Sunday night I wooed, whoever I would with my wicked eyes,

The whole of the moon I could love and leave,

All the green leaved little wedding wives,in the coal black bush and let them grieve,

For my body bereft.





In my craft or sullen art, exercised in the still night,

When only the moon rages, and the lovers lie abed,

With all their grief’s in their arms, I labor by singing light,

Not for ambition nor bread, or the strut and trade of charms,

On the ivory stage, but for the common wages,

Of their most secret heart, not for the proud man apart,

From the raging moon I write, on these spindrift pages,

Not for the towering dead, with their night angles and psalms,

But for the lovers, their arms,round the grief of the wages